


Cycles

by fabula_prima



Category: Taboo (TV 2017)
Genre: Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Curses, Death, Explicit Language, F/M, Imbolc, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Magic, Magical Realism, Necromancy, Paganism, Samhain, Superstition, Tom Hardy - Freeform, Witchcraft, Yule
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27151759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabula_prima/pseuds/fabula_prima
Summary: Step 1: They MeetJames Delaney's returned to London upon his father's death to claim what's rightfully his. His mother tries to drown him in his dreams. Maeve Murray stopped her husband from dying with a bit of black magic and it all went to hell. Now he haunts her. The Age of Enlightenment has no room for magic, but magic doesn't seem to care. When James starts appearing in Maeve's dreams and she starts whispering in his, one thing seems sure enough--what they cannot accomplish on their own will taunt them each until they work together.
Relationships: James Delaney/Original Character(s), James Delaney/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 17





	1. Samhain

__

_The start of winter. Always a moment of necessary death in the glen as the livestock is brought in for slaughter so we might survive the cold. The tension between this world and the other falls loose and liquid. In the streets of London, it’s but another autumn evening. So I took a walk as far as I dared and said goodbye to the sun today. Once again, I must be my own mother and my own father. And once again, I feel his absence like a presence. The birds kept me company all summer, but they’ve returned to their families and I’ve returned to the nest of my bed and the dry heat of my hearth. Even autumn’s crisp air fails to soothe the impending sense of isolation. And it’s certainly not enough to cut through the smog of the city._

_I worry even the moon’s gone quiet—she who has so long been my familiar in these dank city streets. I wonder if someone has returned to her, too, and she has no time for me. Her light is brighter, and her glow is colder, fiercer than ever, like she’s been well-fed by some force that could turn her to gluttony. But I find no such bounty. Every tonic and tincture I prepare, every loaf of bread I bake turns bitter and dull and flat—it is no longer the season of my nature, and that is fine. But I can’t seem to grip onto any of my instincts. I asked the Thames if it was unsettled, I asked the fire if it had any warnings for me, I asked the bones for a premonition. But they assure me all is well. Will be well. A balance is restoring, they say. And it will be painful to start, for the likes of me, who aligns with that which is warm and bright. But it will bring peace, and for that, I will persevere._

_I see a man on a pale horse in my dreams._

_I’m sure the robed brothers seeking alms would have something biblical to say about him. Might try to convince me it’s Death himself come to reap all our corrupted souls. To their credit, the man in the dream has the look for it. He wears a tall hat and a billowing cloak and white paint on his face that cracks until his skin looks like birch bark. His eyes are inky black pools and he speaks only in tongues._

_And yet I do not fear him, no more than I fear the night and the winter. Like them, he is a necessary darkness. Perhaps he is some manifestation of my eagerness for samhain to pass and for the dead to go back to sleep. Perhaps he is a new incarnation of Roland. But I think that unlikely. He has none of Roland’s fear, and absolutely no attachment to me. But he has such energy, he practically vibrates with it. Like a kettle on a stove the moment before it boils. After every visit, I wake with a craving to know what he sounds like when he whistles out._

_But enough of the pale rider. I must prepare for Roland. I have finally found a volume in Latin that might be of some use. My pronunciation has improved considerably since my last attempt–I can only hope that makes some sort of difference. I don’t know how many more episodes I can take. Until yule. ~~Please, let me see yule~~. Imbas._

She scratches out the last line and shuts the journal. She’ll try out a bit of optimism, ill-fitting as it sits on her. And even if she doesn’t live to see the next holiday, it’s better to be remembered fearfully than afraid. No one will miss a London washerwoman, but she might know posthumous admiration if her journals are found. A modern woman descended from an old line of druids. A woman who escaped the whip and the noose and foiled death’s plans for herself and her husband. It could be a sensational story, but she could not show fear. On the page, then, she would be resolute. Brave.

But in her rooms at the boarding house, as she waits for midnight to arrive, she trembles. She picks up the Latin volume and flips to the page she’d marked for attention. A prayer for the dead who were not given proper burial. It’s not quite what happened to Roland, but the logic is the same. Of course, it had been imprecision like this that brought such a haunting to her life. If she’d been more careful, more exact, perhaps she could have avoided the mess entirely. But she has few options in the city. And he’s draining her spirit. She’s desperate, and he’s unreasonable in this form–so different from the calm and careful man she’d married in her youth. In her experience, some souls were well-suited to haunt the living. Others needed to pass. Roland should have passed. Even if it killed her–and it very likely would–she would help him pass.

So she locks her door. From her windowsill, she retrieves the three dishes and sets them in front of the hearth. From her bag, she gathers a bouquet of juniper, a pine candle, and a flint striker. She sets them next to her, on the foot of her bed, closes her eyes, and begins the chant. It was always smoother to invite him in.

_Thrice the candle, thrice the salt.  
Thrice the dishes, empty for praise.  
These three times three ye must wave round  
The corpse until it sleeps sound  
Sleep sound and wake none  
Til to heaven, the soul’s gone_

* * *

A beam of steel white light. Dawn carves dark half moons under her eyes, and through salt-crusted lashes still clinging to last night’s tears, she takes stock of her room. The fire has turned to ash, books and papers litter the floor like rumpled gutter leaves, and the citrus tang of juniper licks into her nostrils. A quick twitch of her fingers and toes indicates that she is, at least, intact. She has survived him.

The morning after his visit always begins with a bitter film in her mouth. More bitter still is not knowing whether her efforts have succeeded. In her gut she knows she has failed. She could reason that not knowing for _certain_ she has failed means, technically, that she could have succeeded. But that sort of logic is the trifling stuff of Enlightenment thinkers and lawyers–the brain and all its rationality. The witch’s organs are the entrails, and hers know no peace. She has failed.

A dig through her memory recalls that Roland had arrived, a stinging cool mist, and asked his questions. “ _Why_?” mostly, but occasionally “ _how_?” She begged him to pass, then compelled him to pass, then tried exorcising him from this world. If it had failed–and she is now certain that it had–she could cross the Church off her list. No. Latin and prayer and cursing the Devil were of no use. She had called upon the echo, the mere shadow of a memory inherited in silence for hundreds of years. That was the dark magic that had brought Roland back to life. So it would be dark magic to put him to rest.

She stretches all her limbs out like a starfish and breathes deeply, focused on the steady rise and fall of her bosom as she works to situate herself back in the present moment. Back in London. Perhaps London is the problem, then. So much self-important noise, so much menial and mundane chatter. Such energy is not the nature of her magic–of course she is impotent in the heart of the city. Running away from Glen Coe had served no purpose, it seems.

That singular thought keeps her mind preoccupied as she weaves through the streets collecting laundry for the day’s wash. She needs to get back to the highlands. To the alder and ash, to the heather and fresh air. That’s where she had opened this godforsaken rift, and that’s where she would close it. But without money or transportation or a chaperone, getting out of London is impossible. London, with all its smog and soot and shit and piss. Filth, and she was tramping right through it. She took on laundering for a bit of money, but it served as penance, too. She could scrub and scrub and watch her hands dry and crack and she would suffer, of course. But by her suffering, something became clean. And something clean in the middle of London was as close as she’d get to comfort. The money wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep herself sheltered and fed. Most days, she exerted more energy making the small bit of coin than she got from the food it bought her. But it gave her something to do during the day, and plenty of menial handiwork for thinking through her plans.

Still reeling from Miss Fordham’s meandering story about her son-in-law, Maeve takes a moment’s pause on the top step before she knocks on the door of the Delaney home, prepared to tell Brace he still owes her for last week’s wash. He’s a skittish sort of man, always trembling, preoccupied with other concerns. But she likes him alright. When she heard old Delaney had passed, she half-expected to lose the household’s business. But Brace hands her a pile of laundry every Monday morning, so she keeps washing it.

She raps cracked knuckles against the wood and waits ages before scuffling feet approach. She watches the doorknob turn with the absolute certainty that someone other than Brace will appear before her. None of Brace’s clumsy jostling. Sure enough, a far younger man appears. The face of a stranger she’d met somewhere before, so otherworldly that she wonders if her repressed psyche has managed to manifest a figure in the flesh before her. But he doesn’t look fleshy–not organic, not soft or mammalian at all. There’s an industrial quality to the look in his sharp eyes, and she half expects a whirring sound to pass between his lips instead of an irritated grunt.

She clears her throat. “Here for the linens.”

He squints at her then, purses his lips tightly, and gestures with one hand, conveying absolutely nothing except for his displeasure. He leaves the door cracked open and vanishes back into the darkness of the room without inviting her in, so she stays on the doorstep and raises her voice to yell inside.

“And here to tell Brace that he owes for last week’s wash.”

He’s gone long enough for her to consider why he seems so familiar. She’s heard gossip around town that, upon Delaney’s passing, his believed-to-be-dead son had returned to London from military service in Africa. It seems likely that’s who she’s just met–the lines of trauma in his face could be a killer’s brand. And he stood before her like a well-used, hastily oiled rifle. Dirty and tarnished and full of rage. But that’s not why she recognizes him.

He reappears without ceremony and piles loose garments into Maeve’s open arms. She raises her chin over the heap to bite back a few cross words about how he really ought to have bagged the laundry first, but then he deposits a fist-sized pouch atop the linens, and the clinking silences her.

“I take it you’re the son.”

He blinks, the whites of his eyes a blue contrast to the soot on his face. He’s just as filthy as the rest of London, all grime and grease. Of all the clothes piled in her arms, nothing needs washing more than the wrinkled tunic he wears. She realizes only now that his legs are bare, banded in black tattoos as inky as his pupils. He grunts an affirmation–the son, after all, perhaps just as mad as the father.

In no more want of conversation, he moves to shut the door. But she sticks the toe of her boot in the way to stop him because she _remembers_.

“You’re the pale rider in my dreams. I’ve seen your face, I mean, caked in white paint.”

It’s a risk, speaking in such riddles. But the gift of second-sight comes with a sense for similarly untethered spirits like her. Like him. He’s not so eager. “You’re mistaken. I’m the Devil, woman. And you should pray I do not haunt your dreams.”

A voice as gruff as his should chill her, and it does. But it’s the curious, bracing sort of chill that lures fingertips to fresh snow, and tongue to icicle. “You don’t haunt them, Mr. Delaney. The man that haunts comes while I’m awake. Your presence in my dreams is a reprieve.”

His eyes flicker, draw up featherlight lines around the edges. When he parts his lips to speak, his teeth flash sharp. “Cursed woman, then.”

She holds his stare in silence, compelled to challenge his insistence that she should be afraid. She fears nothing of the living, and he will learn that eventually. “Oh, cursed beyond your knowing. Laundry will be done tomorrow. And my name’s Maeve, so when I bring it, you can greet me properly.”


	2. Yule

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Step 2: They Hate Each Other
> 
> Maeve is no closer to solving her (mostly) dead husband problem. Wanted by both the King and the East India Trading Company, Delaney mistrusts everyone who seems to know the littlest bit of information about him. Some angst and manhandling ahead.

_I killed the Holly King in my dream last night. Tall as a tree he was, and I climbed the trunk of him and slit his throat. His blood spilled, a hundred thousand berries spread across the forest floor like little red candies, frozen dribbles of sap. Behind me, the Oak King laughed and boomed out his gratitude. Said he’s used to having to do the bloody work himself. I felt so guilty that as penance, I walked into the nearby creek, nearly crusted over in ice. The cold of it squeezed the air from my lungs and kept me from breathing back in. It was if I were drowning with my head above the water. A fog lifted from the creek’s surface and a figure, shoulders sloped, head ducked low, told me I ought to catch the rivulets that were dripping from the corners of my mouth. I woke shivering, the blanket thrown from my bed, and stood in front of the fire until I thought I smelled my own hair burning. I haven’t done that since I was a child, but I recalled granny telling me that’s how my hair got so red, and if I wanted to keep it bright, I ought to stand near to the fire and let it wash over me._

_I have no plan for Roland’s visit tomorrow. The weather saps me of all energy and I’m tempted to let him overwhelm me, bring an end to it all. It’s his wailing that hurts me so. He may not be the husband I married, but I love him still. Perhaps this is how witches go mad. A spell gone wrong, good intentions left to rot. And perhaps I’m a fool for trying to undo what I’ve done. Dark magic has its price, and I shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think I can escape paying it. But he deserves rest. He was a fine husband, a decent man. He deserves rest._

_I take some comfort in the holiday. I could do without Christmas and its false glad tidings, but even London cannot deny me the truth and certainty of the solstice. It will continue growing colder, but at least the days will start stretching out again. The hardest part is nearly over._

_As for the pale rider of my previous dreams...I think he’s made his point. He no longer visits. If granny were still alive, perhaps she’d help interpret it all, but on my own, I’m inclined to say they were of no real consequence. Delaney is a haunting figure--and haunted, too, it seems. He speaks like he’s got a bit of magic himself, so I’ve decided the dreams just before his arrival were the lights of two ships passing in the night; his magic come to warn my magic of a new force in town. I think we are not very alike. Still, I get a queer sot of feeling about him sometimes. Strange as he is, the sound of footsteps is familiar, and the crease of his brow, too. I’m confounded as to whether I should try talking to him more or leaving him alone. Perhaps it’s best, then, that he’s made the decision for me by limiting himself to grunts and huffs of impatience whenever I take or return his laundry with an added pleasantry or two. Unsociable man. But he pays well._

December rain in London falls colder than snow. She tucks her bounty of unwashed clothes under her arm to hold her shawl a bit closer, though it’s hardly any use. The icy droplets soak through the open knit fabric and she resolves to felt some wool before December comes to a close. As it is, she can’t afford a day without wages, and colder weather means more clothes and better pay, so she trudges through the East End streets gathering dirty linens with as much resolve as she had in June. But you wouldn’t know it was anything like resolve by the way she tucks her head. Her eyes are cast down and she’s not looking far ahead, so she doesn’t notice Delaney’s presence until she’s nearly run into him.

It’s the eighth time she’s encountered him, and she still has to talk herself into meeting his eye. He stopped visiting her dreams, perhaps no longer curious now that he’s met her. But his eyes have left an indelible mark in her memory and she always has to remind herself that they’re only eyes, belonging only to a man and not some sort of monster. She’s counted these meetings, counted the number of times he’s grunted at her in place of a “thank you” or a “have a nice day.” They're poor manners, but he’s the son of a successful merchant, after all, and he paid in advance with a diamond once--the source of a lengthy argument wherein he did little more than offer to take the diamond back and not pay her at all. “What am I meant to do with a diamond, sir? Who would I know to sell it to?” Whoever he was, whatever he’d done, they were of a different class. Perhaps a different species. So she counts their meetings in hopes that she will one day be able to mark: “it was on our eighth, our ninth, our twelfth meeting that he treated me like a human being.”

It’s this eighth time, as it happens, that he invites her in. She must look miserable from the rain.

“Come inside while I gather things.”

She nods and steps inside, hovering near the door. The sitting room is precisely as she would have predicted: a fire burning low, papers strewn about, half-drank cups of tea perched on stacks of books, empty glass bottles laid on their sides. It’s not altogether unlike a simple eccentric scholar’s home, but the boarded windows are concerning. And the powdery footprints? Baffling. She’s halfway to the realization that they’re footprints and not shoe prints when Brace comes down the stairs, breakfast tray in hand.

“Miss Murray! My god, come in, come in, ‘fore you catch your death.”

He’s a welcomed sight, after nearly two months of Delaney’s cold behavior, and she hopes her eyes convey as much when she smiles at him. “I wondered if I’d ever see you again!”

“Yes, well, James’ return has called for a bit of reorganizing the house. Would ya like a cuppa tea, lass? Or coffee? It’s his preference, and I’ve just brewed a batch.”

Maeve steps forward hesitantly, peeking down the hallway for the master of the house. “Would it be appropriate?”

He clicks his teeth and shakes his head. “Hardly a house of propriety here, I insist on warmin’ ya up ‘fore we send ya back out.”

Just as Brace relieves Maeve of her armful of laundry, James appears with a modest bag to add to it.

His glance between the two Scots is almost too quick to catch. “You two are familiar.”

It’s less a question than an indictment and Maeve feels obliged to defend her compatriot. “Brace has always been kind. First time I met him, the brogue was a familiar comfort. Like a bit of home.”

Without so much as a nod of comprehension, he spits out a question. “Where in Scotland are you from?”

It’s a harmless inquiry--one she’s happy to answer--but every interest of his feels sinister. So she responds with some hesitation. “Glencoe.”

Some people nod to acknowledge an answer. But James can’t be bothered to do even that, it seems. He blinks. And then he crosses his arms squarely and glares at Maeve. “Met a woman from Paisley when I was very young. An old woman, kept at Bedlam. She thought she was a witch. Told me a story—well, less told me than threatened me with it--about the Oak King and the Holly King and their eternal battle.”

_That fucking dream._ She raises an eyebrow at him, more sure than ever that he possesses some sort of old magic, something akin to hers. But she doesn’t let on yet, just hums in recognition of his tale. “They tell that story elsewhere than Scotland.”

“You agree it’s a story, then. Not fact.”

Oh yes, there’s a flicker in his eye now. A challenge. In one swift moment, the danger of him has turned from threat into curiosity. A transmutation before her very eyes. Something playful leaps out of her, as if possessed. “Do you distinguish between the two, Mr. Delaney? Story and fact?”

He smirks, and it’s an unsettling sight. “Facts are much darker, little bird. Stories can’t come close to the horrors I’ve seen with my own two eyes.”

“People locked in cages, you mean. Flesh torn from the bone. Hangings and mutilations and the smell of your own flesh burning?” It comes from her unbidden and she knows all too well the look on his face--she’s hit the square truth. It first manifested when she was a child, this ability to read a person’s dreams. And more often than not, the darkest of the dreams were some mangled version of a real memory. She made a cousin cry once when she pulled up the dreamt memory of a rabid dog taking off his finger. Her granny took her then and started teaching her how to control the skill. Now, it’s a guaranteed method for taking the upperhand, and Delaney, like so many others, surges into anger at the intrusion.

He’s on her in a flash, a rough and soot-stained hand around her neck. It’s a gentle touch, but firm, where he holds her, pressed against the banister of the staircase.

“Who are you?”

“Maeve. Maeve Murray, jus--just Maeve Murray.”

“Crown or Company?”

The simple question of who she was seems reasonable, but this--this accusation of something she can’t quite pinpoint yet is enough to piss her off.

“Unhand me you fucking animal.”

That riles him. He doesn’t squeeze his hand tighter, but he uses the weight of his body to press her a little harder against the bannister. He nearly purrs when he speaks, even though the words themselves taste of venom. “Whose purse are you in, hm? Been ‘round since before my father’s death, that’d make you Company.”

“Let her go, James, she’s not part of it.” Brace finally speaks as the voice of reason and James drops his hand to rest on her shoulder. She’s mad enough to claw his eyes out, but that hand on her shoulder--the bare bit of it hidden beneath her shawl that he’s only able to touch now because he’d previously had his hand around her bare neck. She feels that hand there like a brand.

So it takes far too long for her to say, “I’m a fucking washerwoman from Glencoe, ain’t in a purse ‘cept my own measly one, you bastard.”

He isn’t pinning her anymore, but she can’t bring herself to move. His eyes grow wide and she shivers at the almost blue shade the whites of them seem to have. Then he blinks and comes back to his senses. Not an inch of him is touching her now, but he’s only a hair’s breadth away from her face. “You see the boards on the windows, hm? D’you know why they’re there?”

She shakes her head silently.

“‘Cause my corpse is the most valuable prize in all of London. I cannot afford to trust anyone right now. Not even a washerwoman from Glencoe.”

It’s not an apology, and it’s not a proper excuse, but she’s piecing his motives together. He doesn’t need to know that yet. “Well you didn’t have to manhandle me.”

“No.” He steps back with a lingering look before schooling his expression back into that of the unreadable Mr. Delaney she’s come to expect. “Perhaps not.”

“And my being from Glencoe should’a been telling enough. I’d hang myself before I got into bed with either Crown or Company.”

Something akin to relief flashes across his face and he finally backs away. “Sometimes bedding down with the enemy is the easiest thing to do. No doubt they’d pay handsomely.”

She spits at the suggestion. “I’m a clever woman in every way except one--stubborn hatred of the English. If I played nicer, I’d get outta here quicker, but I’ve got a wee bit more pride than sense in that regard. Meaning no offense, of course.”

He raises his eyebrows as he looks toward the boarded windows. “None. I’d wager I hate them more than you.”

Eventually, she learns his good reasons for hating his own countrymen. But for the moment, he just sounds petulant. Melodramatic. Like a petty criminal pouting for having gotten caught. He lived in a nice house, he had a servant for Christ’s sake. James Delaney was doing just fine. “Right, I’m sure you’ve been very persecuted and all, but I’m really not needling for information. I’ve got problems of my own, Mr. Delaney, and I’d thank you to not drag me into yours.” He stares hard at her for a moment and she has to actively try not to shiver. Those goddamn ghostly eyes of his. “Your wash’ll be cleaned and done by Wednesday.”

He nods and she finally steps away from the staircase to retrieve the laundry she’d sat down upon entering. Brace hands her the bag James had gathered and pats her reassuringly on the shoulder. “Take care, lass. He dinnae mean any harm.”

She’s not entirely sure she believes that claim, but he pays better than any of her other clients, so she’ll not be running away from Mr. Delaney yet. She’s halfway through the door when he calls out, gruff and curious.

“The Holly King. His reign ends today, doesn’t it?”

She doesn’t turn to face him, just pauses where she is. “Aye, ‘tis midwinter.”

“And do you always take it upon yourself to slay him, Maeve Murray?”

When she finally turns, she sees his face on the figure from her dream. His sloped shoulders, his cowlicked hair, his palms flat against the water’s surface as he spoke to her. Perhaps he hadn’t stopped visiting her dreams after all. But she still can’t bear to give him the satisfaction of her own curiosity, so she smiles politely and shrugs. “I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning. I’m just a washerwoman from Glencoe.”


	3. Imbolc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Step 3: They Agree to Work Together
> 
> We finally start a chapter from James' perspective and get a bit more of Maeve's backstory.

_The brandy is to put me to sleep. Without it, the dreams wouldn’t afford me a bit of rest and I’d be madder than I’m naturally inclined to be. There are other tonics I could take, drugs for the express purpose of quieting my mind. But the lingering effects after waking aren’t worth it--not when I’ve such work to do. So I drink the brandy and hope for the best._

_On occasion, the brandy fails me and the exhaustion catches up and I am at the whim and mercy of the voices and their complaints. Doesn’t matter that I have my own problems. The dead moan evermore about injustice and their unfinished business, clinging onto the shirttails of what little sanity I have left ‘til I’m weighed down heavy as a stone. All of them except for my mother. In my dreams, visiting without my beckoning, she’s a different woman entirely from the figure who heeds my call when I’m awake. I wonder which is closer to the truth: the meek and fearful hands that come unbidden in the early morning when I can no longer fight off sleep or the rage that answers when I seek her out?_

_And now the red-haired witch stands flickering, a taunting little flame in the background of it all. There are no layers to the woman. She is the same in the dreams as she is on my doorstep, waiting for laundry. She hides nothing, even if she doesn’t say everything. There is a vulnerability to her that unnerves me, precisely because I so desperately want it to soothe me. She’s a relic of a pagan time gone by, I can feel the old and ragged magic of her. She hasn’t armored herself against the schemes of modernity, and yet I do not think she is naive. On the contrary, I am relieved to know that someone like her has endured. But I’m also certain that she cannot endure much longer._

_Something eats at her. I see it when our dreams cross--the shadow of a man that wails and wraps his inky tendrils around her ankles so that she can hardly take a step forward. She chants curses at him in some old celtic tongue that’s been lost to all but witches like her, and I wonder if he haunts her days as well as her nights._

There’s a sliver of pale morning light melting through the clouds. She arrives at his door, but he answers before she knocks.

“Mr. Delaney.”

She can feel the thickness of her own accent and wonders if there’s a tone of surprise in her voice, too, because he squints. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“Not at all.” Clearing her throat, she resettles the weight in her arms. “I--you anticipated my arrival, is all. Didn’t even have a chance to knock.”

“Yes, well, you’re predictable.” He opens the door wider and sweeps his hand back as if to bid her enter.

“Most prefer punctuality. Would you rather I surprise you next time?”

The barest flicker of a smile tugs at his mouth, but it doesn’t really serve to make him look any more personable. He takes the basket of laundry from her hands, deposits it with a shocking amount of care on the floor beside the staircase, and leads her to the sitting room. The house is reasonably less chaotic than the last time she was invited in. There are still a few boards on the windows, but light’s been allowed to leak in between them. The low table at the center of the room is mostly cleared of bric-a-brac, but traces of breakfast remain.

Maeve takes a hesitant seat, careful to perch on the edge of the sofa so as not to make herself too comfortable. And then the excruciating silence begins. He pours coffee without a word. He offers a dish of scones without a word. He peels a boiled egg for his own consumption without a word. And only after he’s eaten and drank his fill does he turn to Maeve and explain himself--though explain is a generous word.

He swallows his last bite and washes it down with such a gulp of coffee that he grimaces as it settles. Then he leans forward. “Ms. Murray, I need you to stop interfering with my dreams.”

“You dream of me?” She plays innocent for a moment, still catching up to his sudden candor. “Should I be flattered?”

To his credit, he manages not to scowl. “I’ve very little patience for games, madam, and even less time. If it speeds this process, I’ll acknowledge my own dalliances with the supernatural first. You did indeed see me in your dreams before you met me; it was no accident.”

“I know.” Oh, she hadn’t expected an admission, not from him. Perhaps it should make her uneasy, intimidate her in some way. But it serves the exact purpose he’d hoped it would.

“You do business in dreams as well?” he asks, just before taking a more modest sip of coffee.

“I have them, if that’s what you mean.” She waves her hand at him to disregard her teasing before he can even manage to frown. “Truth is, a bit of magic runs through most Scottish women you’ll ever meet. It’s down in our bones at this point, practically a means of survival. You might say I have a certain sense--an awareness of forces and energies, if you like. And I’ve always had disturbing dreams. Prophetic, sometimes. But I’ve got no control over them. Believe what you like, but that’s the god’s honest truth.”

If he doesn’t like her answer, he does a fair job of not showing it. “So when you show up in my dreams, you mean to tell me it’s an accident.”

“I don’t even realize what’s happened ‘til I see you,” she says nodding. “I thought it was your doing.”

“No, not my doing.” Without missing a beat, he alters his line of question. “Sometimes there’s another figure with you. Last night--”

“Aye, it was the night of imbolc. I couldn’t see him for certain, but I felt his heaviness. Not surprised you saw him.”

“Who is he to you?”

That warrants a pause to collect herself. She weighs her options quickly and uses the process of sitting further back on the couch as a moment to stall. “You know, Mr. Delaney, I don’t think I ought to trust you. So when I tell you what I’m about to tell you, please know I’m not confiding in you. It’s just that I expect a man of your sort probably isn’t in a position to judge a woman for what I’ve done.”

He scrapes his top teeth across his bottom lip and gestures with a nod for her to continue.

“The man you saw--well, the ghost of him, I suppose--is my husband. My late husband, Roland. His death was unexpected. I loved him very much; was lucky in that, not many arranged marriages turn out so well. Now, like I said before, I’ve always had a bit of what’s called second-sight. My granny taught me what she could before she passed, but it wasn’t much. Never got a good grasp on it, so it was all instinct: powerful, but imprecise. I was shattered, losing Roland. At one point I started praying--thought I was praying, anyway. Praying for him to come back to me, not to leave me all alone. I don’t know what god or spirit answered, but I got what I asked for. I did something that night, before he’d had his rites. In my selfishness, I invoked something dark, maybe evil. I’d say I didn’t mean to do it, and I know I didn’t mean for it to turn out like this, but I meant it when I begged for him to come back. Never meant anything harder in my life. So he didn’t pass on properly and now he haunts me. Quite literally. Comes back on every solstice, every equinox, every midpoint, he visits and wails at me and asks me why, _why_ do I not touch him and hold him and love him? It’s worse and worse each time, less like my Roland. Last night was his seventh visit. Sometimes I’m lucky and he leaves my dreams alone. But last night, he didn’t want to let go.”

She takes another deep breath and sits forward a little, betraying how eager she is to hear his response. He doesn’t take long to process it.

“Mm. Explains the look in your eye.”

“Crazed?”

“Exhausted.”

She snorts out a laugh. “One and the same these days. But yes, very tired. I’m sure you didn’t want my whole tragic story, but you see, every bit of my energy is spent trying to put his spirit to rest. Even if I normally had control over my dreams, I wouldn’t be able to do anything about them now. I can promise you though--I’ll leave you alone as best I can. Surely the collective unconscious is big enough for the both of us.”

He scratches idly at the back of his head and she notices that his hair’s a little longer than when she first met him, but still sheared short on the sides. She can’t think of anyone else she knows who wears a style like his, but it suits him. He clears his throat to get her full attention before he relents. “I suppose that’ll have to do for now.”

There are a couple beats of silence while she contemplates getting up to leave, but he seems a little less guarded this morning, and she can hardly pass up the chance to dig him open. “What about you?” she asks before she can help herself. “Who’s the raven-haired woman that seems to torment you? Your late wife, perhaps?”

“Late mother.”

Now that _is_ a surprise, and she’s sure it shows on her face. “Forgive me, but she hasn’t got a very maternal energy.”

“No, not really. She keeps trying to drown me.”

He says it as casually as one might mention the weather and Maeve wonders if violence is something that can be born into a person. “Was she aggressive like that in life?”

“From what I’m told, she was absolutely uncivilized.” He gives her a conspiratorial little look with that word choice, but keeps going without pause. “She died when I was young, but she’s come back to me recently.”

“You don’t seem altogether put out by it.”

“It’s part of something larger,” he assures, draining the last of his cup. “I’m only getting it in pieces: the dreams, the dead that speak to me, the magic. Magic’s the kind word for it, I’m inclined to think it’s madness. But her return has coincided with the arrival of my destiny, so no, I’m not bothered by it. Yet.”

“Destiny, aye?” It takes tremendous effort to not laugh at his theatrics. She suspects he doesn’t like being laughed at. “A mighty big undertaking...pray tell, Mr. Delaney. What’s your destiny?”

He wags a finger like he’s scolding a child. “No no, that’s not something I share.”

“I’ll need to know it if I’m going to help you.”

“Why would I want your help?”

“You said the dead speak to you. Can you speak back? Because I can. And I can tell you why your mother keeps trying to drown you in your dreams.”

“Why?” It’s the first time she sees earnestness in his face. Gone are the affectations and masks of mystery. His eyes shine a little and his lips part. It strips the laughter from her. Humbles her.

“She’s reliving it,” she says, voice nearly cracking. “Just after you were born, she tried drowning you. Thought of it as a mercy. She wants you to know what she did, but she doesn’t have a voice to say it. So she’ll do it to you, over and over again, until she’s sure you understand.”

“Why the hell would she want me to know that?”

He looks even more curious than before, not the least bit disturbed by his mother trying to kill him. Just confused as to why she’d admit it. She’s tempted to tell him everything she’s sensed, but there’s an idea brewing in the back of her mind and she can’t give him everything for free. “Nope. No more answers until you tell me about this destiny of yours.”

“Remember you said you don’t trust me? That’s a wise decision, so forgive me if I don’t quite trust you.”

“I’ve given you more than enough fodder to have me ruined, if you like--black magic, haunted by my husband, certainly invalidating the terms of my lease at the boarding house. You don’t have to trust me, but even _you_ have to admit I have every motivation to stay on your good side.”

“Why are you so interested in helping me?”

“Because I need your help in return,” she ventures. She’s piecing it together as she goes, but his arrival in her life makes more sense as she speaks. “I’ve tried everything in my power to put Roland to rest, but it’s not enough. Black magic isn’t something that comes naturally to me, but there’s something very dark and very potent in you.”

“You want to use me?”

“I want to propose a kind of exchange,” she says, pursing her lips and staring at the floor, as if in contemplation. “Look, you’ve been vague about all this, but I know it’s new to you. I can feel it in my dreams, you hardly know which way is up. People like us are far more powerful together than we are apart. If nothing else, I’ll be saving you time. You said yourself you don’t have much of it.”

He hasn’t even agreed yet, but she feels a thrill. He’s overly dramatic, he’s a magnet for trouble, and his spirit’s as dark as anyone’s she’s ever met. But he’s sharp, too, and intriguing. And she likes being able to keep his attention, like she is now, holding his stare as he tries to read through her intentions.

“Very well,” he decides, leaning back in his seat. “But I don’t work for you. And you listen to me.”

She pushes her hands down onto her knees for leverage and pops up out of her seat, ready to carry on with her day. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Mr. Delaney. God knows the brandy doesn’t always work.”

Only once he’s heard the front door close does he shake his head to fend off a laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not so blinded by admiration for Tom Hardy that I can’t acknowledge how wildly problematic Taboo is. I’ve wanted to play with the character of James Delaney for a long time, but I have no interest in perpetuating the series’ clumsy and often irresponsible handling of African and First Nations cultures, religions, and spiritualities. To that end, I’m entering the scene by way of an original character with a similar penchant for magic and second sight. Hers is rooted in Celtic paganism and druidic spirituality, both of which I am personally invested in, and which I always thought would have been more appropriate to the show’s setting and cast. And in referring to various traditions, rites, and rituals as “magic,” I mean absolutely no trivialization. It’s not a spooky gimmick. It’s a legitimate, meaningful spirituality and approach to the world. The holidays on which each chapter is set are holidays that I observe.
> 
> While this is a fic where I have the opportunity to explore the character of James Delaney, his arc, and his narrative, it’s also a writing exercise for me. There will be no immediate gratification here. It’ll be 8 chapters, and each chapter will correspond to and be posted around the time of each of the 8 “wheel of the year” holidays; the solstices, equinoxes, and midpoint holidays. It’s seasonal, it’s cyclical, and the time of year is meant to be its own character within each chapter. That means it’ll be fall 2021 before this thing concludes. Just for shits and giggles, I wanna see what deliberately pacing myself produces.
> 
> As much as I plan not to perpetuate a lot of the “let’s pretend Tom Hardy is half-indigenous-american” nonsense, the original character that serves as his counterpoint will likely call him out on it. If my addressing of that--or anything else that I incorporate--strikes readers as unfaithful, irresponsible, or problematic, I’ll welcome conversation. Fic should be fun, but I don’t want to have the fun at the expense of disrespecting someone else’s cultural experience--intentionally or otherwise.
> 
> I welcome comments and conversation!


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